Amazingly, the question of an actual
historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith
has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic
scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition,
religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook
about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians
present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical
Jesus.

ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM
HEARSAY ACCOUNTS

No one has the slightest physical
evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry,
or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of
other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius
Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs
not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents
about Jesus came well after the life of the alleged Jesus from
either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from
fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that
many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information
and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations,
they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply
because all sources about Jesus derive from hearsay accounts.

Hearsay means information derived
from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.

Courts of law do not generally
allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay
does not provide good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.

If you do not understand this,
imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did
not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know
that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine
that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence.
When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against
you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but
solely because they claim other people said so. None of these other people, mind
you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.

Hearsay does not work as evidence
because we have no way of knowing whether the person lied, or simply based
his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history about
witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable
nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no
good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe
in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies
believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from
these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning
must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.

Authors of ancient history today,
of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed
from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources
that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For
example, a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington,
of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to
documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians
about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains
as hearsay.

THE BIBLE GOSPELS

The most "authoritative"
accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the
Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and
authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of
early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus
of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels
existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical
reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the
four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate,
and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf
of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies).
The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of
the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]

Elaine Pagels writes: "Although
the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi--
are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote
any of them." [Pagels, 1995]

Not only do we not know who wrote
them, consider that none of the Gospels existed during the alleged life
of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly
Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we
only have copies of copies.

The consensus of many biblical
historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime
after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms].
This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that
we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the
first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war,
or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the
work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels,
1995]

The traditional Church has portrayed
the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars
know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence
that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the
Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these
authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label
the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St.
Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced
his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But
one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship.
As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can
find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

Even if the texts supported the
notion that the apostles wrote them, consider the low life expectancy of
humans in the first century. According to the religious scholar, J.D. Crossan, "the life expectancy of Jewish males in the Jewish state was then twenty-nine years." [Crossan] Some people think this age appears deceptive because of the high infant mortally rates at birth. However, at birth the inhabitants of the Roman Empire had an even lower life expectancy of around twenty-five years. [source] According to Ulpian, a Roman jurist of the early third century C.E., the average life expectancy at birth came even lower to around twenty-one. [Potter] Of course these ages represent averages and some people lived after the age of 30, but how many? According to the historian Richard Carrier: "We have reason to believe that only 4% of the population at any given time was over 50 years old; over age 70, less than 2%. And that is under normal circumstances. But the Gospels were written after two very devastating abnormal events: the Jewish War and the Neronian Persecution, both of which would have, combined, greatly reduced the life expectancy of exactly those people who were eye-witnesses to the teachings of Jesus. And it just so happens that these sorts of people are curiously missing from the historical record precisely when the Gospels began to be circulated." [Carrier] Even if they lived to those unlikely ages, consider the mental and physical toll (especially during the 1st century) which would have likely reduced their memory and capability to write. Moreover, those small percentages of people who lived past 50 years were usually wealthy people (aristocrats, politicians, land and slave owners, etc.). However, the Gospels suggest that the followers of Jesus lived poorly, and this would further reduce the chances for a long life span. Although the New Testament does not provide the ages of the disciples, most Christians think their ages came to around 20-30 years old. Jesus' birth would have to have occurred before Herod's death at 4 B.C.E. So if Jesus' birth occurred in the year 4 B.C.E., that would put the age of the disciples, at the time of the writing of the first gospel, at around age 60-70 and the last gospel at around age 90-100! Based on just life expectancies alone, that would make the probability unlikely they lived during the writing of the first gospel, and extremely unlikely any of them lived during the writing of the last gospel (and I have used only the most conservative numbers).

The gospel of Mark describes the
first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the
Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before
Matthew. From its own words, one can deduce that the author of Mark had neither
heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel simply accepted the story of Jesus without question and wrote a crude
an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Historians tell us
of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), Mark
served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and provided the main source
for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some
300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least
a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]

* Most Bibles show 678
verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses
came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient
sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match
and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.

The author of Matthew had obviously
gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs.
He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He
improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically
important, and heightened the miracles and magic.

The author of Luke admits himself
as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4).
Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very
least, a Hellenized Jew. Some scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke came from
the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle,
which means "source"). [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have
no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where
or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Moreover, other scholars challenge its existence and those who do think Q existed have problems explaining it. Again we get
faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.

John, the last appearing Bible
Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could
not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel
of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover
the unknown author(s) of this gospel wrote it in Greek near the end of the first century, and according
to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference
to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]

Please understand that the stories
themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came
as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters
themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually
in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses
will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of
the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of
its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come
from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more
marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus
confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional
writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay,
and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.

OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS

Even in antiquity people like Origen
and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New
Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation.
Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle
of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation.
Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death
of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although
still after the alleged death).

Epistles of Paul: Paul's
biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts,
written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt
that Paul wrote some of them himself. Of the thirteen epistles, bible scholars think he wrote only eight of them, and even here, there occurs interpolations. Not a single instance
in any of Paul's writings claims that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor
does Paul give any reference to Jesus' life on earth (except for a few well known interpolations). Therefore, all accounts
about a Jesus could only have come from other believers or his imagination.
Hearsay.

Epistle to the Galatians:In this letter Paul describes a meeting with Peter and James, the Lord's brother (Gal: 1:18-20). The problem here involves the meaning of "Lord's brother." Some scholars think this means the biological brother of the Lord while others think it means brother in a communal spiritual sense, as all Christians are the Lord's brothers and sisters. Note, never does any epistle refer to the brother of Jesus. In all cases, Paul uses the word "Lord," consistent with the spiritual sense. In any case, even if this phrase did mean a biological brother, Paul could not have known that James had a brother. At best he could only have believed it because his information could only have come from another person, most likely James himself. That makes this letter hearsay.

Epistle of James: Although
the epistle identifies a James as the letter writer, but which James? Many
claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different
James. Which one? Or maybe this James has nothing to do with any of the gospel
James. Perhaps this writer comes from any one of innumerable James outside
the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and Biblical scholars simply
have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the point, the Epistle
of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere
does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it
from a historical account. [1]

Epistles of John: Scholars tell us the epistles
of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and
content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these
writings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who
followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who
aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come
from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note
that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it
mention a John. In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing
an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can
only serve as hearsay accounts. [2]

Epistles of Peter: Many
scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the
first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider
the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples,
see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible,
1985).
The unknown authors of the epistles of Peter wrote long after the life of the traditional Peter. Moreover, Peter lived (if he ever lived at all) as an ignorant and illiterate peasant (even Acts 4:13 attests to this). In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter
come from fraud, an author claiming himself to know what Peter said (hearsay), or from
someone trying to further the aims of the Church. Encyclopedias usually describe a tradition that Saint Peter wrote them. However, whenever you see the word "tradition" it refers to a belief passed down within a society. In other words: hearsay. [3], [4]

Epistle of Jude: Even early Christians argued about its authenticity. It quotes an apocryphal book called Enoch as if it represented authorized Scripture. Biblical scholars do not think it possible for the alleged disciple Jude to have written it because whoever wrote it had to have written it during a period when the churches had long existed. Like the other alleged disciples, Jude would have lived as an illiterate peasant and unable to write (much less in Greek) but the author of Jude wrote in fluent high quality Greek.

Of the remaining books and letters
in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts
for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation.

As for the existence of original
New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives
in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies
of copies, of questionable originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time,
as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The
earliest copies we have came more than a century later than the autographs,
and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to
Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the
New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies
from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield]

LYING FOR THE CHURCH

The editing and formation of the
Bible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of
the Church possessed the scriptoria and determined what would appear in the Bible,
there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create
texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the
Church themselves.

The orthodox Church also fought
against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the inclusion
of the four (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against
the Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only
became the yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point
of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith."
[Romer]
If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings got burnt along with them
because of their heretical nature. We will never know.

In attempting to salvage the Bible
the respected revisionist and scholar, Bruce Metzger has written extensively
on the problems of the New Testament. In his book, "The Text of the New
Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Metzger addresses:
Errors arising from faulty eyesight; Errors arising from faulty hearing; Errors
of the mind; Errors of judgment; Clearing up historical and geographical
difficulties; and Alterations made because of doctrinal considerations. [Metzger]

The Church had such power over
people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what
the Church claimed, most people simply believed what their priests told them.

In letter LII To Nepotian, Jerome writes about his teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus when he asked him to explain a phrase in Luke, Nazianzus evaded his request by saying “I will tell you about it in church, and there, when all the people applaud me, you will be forced against your will to know what you do not know at all. For, if you alone remain silent, every one will put you down for a fool." Jerome responds with, "There is nothing so easy as by sheer volubility to deceive a common crowd or an uneducated congregation."

In the 5th century, John Chrysostom in his "Treatise on the Priesthood, Book 1," wrote, "And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived."

Ignatius
Loyola of the 16th century wrote in his Spiritual Exercises: "To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it."

Martin Luther opined: "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them."

With such admission to accepting lies, the burning of heretical
texts, Bible errors and alterations, how could any honest scholar take any
book from the New Testament as absolute, much less using extraneous texts
that support a Church's intransigent and biased position, as reliable evidence?

GNOSTIC GOSPELS

In 1945, an Arab made an archeological
discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since
referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two heretical
books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James,
John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400
C.E. They represent copies from previous copies. None of the original texts
exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the originals. Some of them
think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 C.E. Others have
put it closer to 140 C.E. [Pagels, 1979]

Other Gnostic gospels such as the
Gospel of Judas, found near the Egyptian site of the Nag Hammadi texts, shows
a diverse pattern of story telling, always a mark of myth. The Judas gospel
tells of Judas Iscariot as Jesus' most loyal disciple, just opposite that
of the canonical gospel stories. Note that the text does not claim
that Judas Iscariot wrote it. The Judas gospel, a copy written in Coptic,
dates to around the third-to fourth-century. The original Greek version probably
dates to between 130 and 170 C.E., around the same time as the Nag Hammadi
texts. Irenaeus first mentions this gospel in Adversus Haereses
(Against Heresies) written around 180 C.E., so we know that this represented
a heretical gospel.

Since these Gnostic texts could
only have its unknown authors writing well after the alleged life of Jesus,
they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical
versions. Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay.

NON-CHRISTIAN SOURCES

Virtually all other claims of Jesus
come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims
of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts come
from authors who lived after the alleged life of Jesus. Since they
did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts
serve as eyewitness evidence.

Josephus Flavius, the Jewish
historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although
many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities)
came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely,
Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 C.E. (well after the alleged crucifixion
of Jesus), puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote
Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written!
Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information
could only serve as hearsay.

Pliny the Younger (born: 62 C.E.) His letter about the Christians only shows that
he got his information from Christian believers themselves. Regardless, his
birth date puts him out of range as an eyewitness account.

Tacitus, the Roman historian's
birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives
a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec.
44), which he wrote around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material.
Although many have disputed the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus,
the very fact that his birth happened after the alleged Jesus and
wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his
writing can only provide us with hearsay accounts.

Suetonius, a Roman historian,
born in 69 C.E., mentions a "Chrestus," a common name. Apologists
assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ" (a disputable claim).
But even if Seutonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing
about an earthly Jesus. Just like all the others, Suetonius' birth occurred
well after the purported Jesus. Again, only hearsay.

Talmud: Amazingly some Christians
use brief portions of the Talmud, (a collection of Jewish civil a religious
law, including commentaries on the Torah), as evidence for Jesus. They claim
that Yeshu in the Talmud refers to Jesus.
However, this Yeshu, according to scholars depicts a disciple
of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus or it may refer to Yeshu ben Pandera, a teacher of the 2nd centuy CE.
Regardless of how one interprets this, the Palestinian Talmud didn't come into existence until the 3rd and 5th century C.E., and the Babylonian Talmud between
the 3rd and 6th century C.E., at least two centuries after the alleged crucifixion.
At best it can only serve as a controversial Christian or Jewish legend; it
cannot possibly serve as evidence for a historical Jesus.

Christian apologists mostly use the above sources for their "evidence" of Jesus because they believe they represent the best outside sources. All other sources (Christian
and non-Christian) come from even less reliable sources, some of which include: Mara Bar-Serapion (circa 73 C.E.),
Ignatius (50 - 98? C.E.), Polycarp (69 - 155 C.E.), Clement of Rome (? - circa
160 C.E.), Justin Martyr (100 - 165 C.E.), Lucian (circa 125 - 180 C.E.),
Tertullian (160 - ? C.E.), Clement of Alexandria (? - 215 C.E.), Origen (185
- 232 C.E.), Hippolytus (? - 236 C.E.), and Cyprian (? - 254 C.E.). As you can see, all these
people lived well after the alleged death of Jesus. Not one of them provides
an eyewitness account, all of them simply spout hearsay.

As you can see, apologist Christians
embarrass themselves when they unwittingly or deceptively violate the rules
of historiography by using after-the-event writings as evidence for the event
itself. Not one of these writers gives a source or backs up his claims with
evidential material about Jesus. Although we can provide numerous reasons
why the Christian and non-Christian sources prove spurious, and argue endlessly
about them, we can cut to the chase by simply determining the dates of the
documents and the birth dates of the authors. It doesn't matter what these
people wrote about Jesus, an author who writes after the alleged happening
and gives no detectable sources for his material can only give example of
hearsay. All of these anachronistic writings about Jesus could easily have
come from the beliefs and stories from Christian believers themselves. And
as we know from myth, superstition, and faith, beliefs do not require facts
or evidence for their propagation and circulation. Thus we have only beliefs about Jesus' existence, and nothing more.

FAKES, FRAUDS, AND FICTIONS

Because the religious mind relies
on belief and faith, the religious person can inherit a dependence on any
information that supports a belief and that includes fraudulent stories, rumors,
unreliable data, and fictions, without the need to check sources, or to investigate
the reliability of the information. Although hundreds of fraudulent claims
exist for the artifacts of Jesus, I will present only three examples which
seem to have a life of their own and have spread through the religious community
and especially on internet discussion groups.

The Shroud of Turin

Many faithful people believe the
shroud represents the actual burial cloth of Jesus where they claim the image
on the cloth represents an actual 'photographic' image left behind by the
crucified body.

The first mention of the shroud
comes from a treatise (written or dictated) by Geoffroi de Charny in 1356
and who claims to have owned the cloth (see The
Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi De Charny). Later, in the 16th century,
it suddenly appeared in a cathedral in Turin, Italy. (Note that thousands
of claimed Jesus relics appeared in cathedrals throughout Europe, including
the wood from the cross, chalices, blood of Jesus, etc. These artifacts proved
popular and served as a prosperous commercial device which filled the money
coffers of the churches.) [See The Family Jewels for some examples.]

Sadly, many people of faith believe
that there actually exists scientific evidence to support their beliefs in
the shroud's authenticity. Considering how the Shroud's apologists use the
words, "science," "fact," and "authentic," without
actual scientific justification, and even include pseudo-scientists (without
mentioning the 'pseudo') to testify to their conclusions, it should not come
to any surprise why a faithful person would not question their information
or their motives. Television specials have also appeared that purport the authenticity of the shroud. Science, however, does not operate
though television specials who have a commercial interest and have no qualms
about deceiving the public.

Experts around the world consider
the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has remained in a cathedral in Turin since
1578, a forgery because of carbon-dating tests performed in 1988. Three different
independent radiocarbon dating laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and the University
of Arizona yielded a date range of 1260-1390 C.E. (consistent with the time
period of Charny's claimed ownership). Joe Zias of Hebrew University of Jerusalem
calls the shroud indisputably a fake. "Not only is it a forgery, but
it's a bad forgery." The shroud actually depicts a man whose front measures
2 inches taller than his back and whose elongated hands and arms would indicate
that he had the affliction of gigantism if he actually lived. (Also read Joe
Nickell's, Inquest
On The Shroud Of Turin: Latest Scientific Findings)

Walter C. McCrone, et al, (see
Judgment
Day for the Shroud of Turin) discovered red ochre (a pigment found
in earth and widely used in Italy during the Middle Ages) on the cloth which
formed the body image and vermilion paint, made from mercuric sulphide, used
to represent blood. The actual scientific findings reveal the shroud as a
14th century painting, not a two-thousand year-old cloth with Christ's image.
Revealingly, no Biblical scholar or scientist (with any credibility), cites
the shroud of Turin as evidence for a historical Jesus.

The Burial box of James

Even many credible theologians
bought this fraud, hook-line-and-sinker. The Nov./Dec. 2002, issue of Biblical
Archaeology Review magazine announced a "world exclusive!" article
about evidence of Jesus written in stone, claiming that they found the actual
ossuary of "James, Brother of Jesus" in Jerusalem. This story exploded
on the news and appeared widely on television and newspapers around the world.

Interestingly, they announced the
find as the "earliest historical reference of Jesus yet found."
Since they claimed the inscribing on the box occurred around 70 C.E.,
that agrees with everything claimed by this thesis (that no contemporary
evidence exists for Jesus). Even if the box script proved authentic,
it would not provide evidence for Jesus simply because no one knew who wrote
the script or why. It would only show the first indirect mention of a
Jesus and it could not serve as contemporary evidence simply because it didn't come into existence until long after the alleged death of Jesus.

The claim for authenticity of the
burial box of James, however, proved particularly embarrassing for the Biblical
Archaeology Review and for those who believed them without question. Just
a few months later, archaeologists determined the inscription as a forgery
(and an obvious one at that) and they found the perpetrator and had him arrested
(see 'Jesus
box' exposed as fake and A
fake? James Ossuary dealer arrested, suspected of forgery).

Regrettably, the news about the
fraud never matched the euphoria of the numerous stories of the find and many
people today still believe the story as true.

Letters of Pontius Pilate

This would appear hilarious if
not for the tragic results that can occur from believing in fiction: many
faithful (especially on the internet) have a strong belief that Pontius Pilate
actually wrote letters to Seneca in Rome where he mentions Jesus and his reported
healing miracles.

Considering the lack of investigational
temper of the religious mind, it might prove interesting to the critical reader
that the main source for the letters of Pilate come from W. P. Crozier's 1928
book titled, "Letters
of Pontius Pilate: Written During His Governorship of Judea to His Friend
Seneca in Rome." The book cites Crozier as the editor as if he
represented a scholar who edited Pilate's letters. Well, from the title, it
certainly seems to indicate that Pilate wrote some letters doesn't
it? However, unbeknownst or ignored by the uncritical faithful, this book
represents Crozier's first novel, a fictionalized account of what he
thought Pilate would have written.

During the first publication, no
one believed this novel represented fact and reviews of the day reveal it
as a work
of fiction.

Crozier, a newspaper editor, went
to Oxford University and retained an interest in Latin, Greek and the Bible.
He wrote this novel as if it represented the actual letters of Pilate. Of
course no scholar would cite this as evidence because no letters exist of
Pilate to Seneca, and Seneca never mentions Jesus in any of his writings.

The belief in Pilate's letters
represents one of the more amusing fad beliefs in evidential Jesus, however,
it also reveals just how myths, fakes, and fictions can leak into religious
thought. Hundreds of years from now, Crozier's fictionalized account may very
well end up just as 'reliable' as the gospels.

WHAT ABOUT WRITINGS DURING THE
LIFE OF JESUS?

What appears most revealing of
all, comes not from what people later wrote about Jesus but what people did
not write about him. Consider that not a single historian, philosopher,
scribe or follower who lived before or during the alleged time of Jesus ever
mentions him!

If, indeed, the Gospels portray
a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that stands out
prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far
and wide, not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests,
the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he had heard "of
the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only read Matt: 4:25 where
it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people
from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and
from beyond Jordan." The gospels mention, countless times, the
great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who congregated to
hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1 alleges
that an "innumerable multitude of people... trode one upon another."
Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes
came together to hear..." The persecution of Jesus in Jerusalem drew
so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high
priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion.
(see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought
of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5).

So here we have the gospels portraying
Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes
of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and
the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence
during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests,
and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him?

Then we have a particular astronomical
event that would have attracted the attention of anyone interested in the
"heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45, there occurred "about
the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth
hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the
midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour ecliptic event
got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and astrologers, anywhere
in the world, including Pliny the Elder and Seneca who both recorded eclipses from other dates. Note also that, for obvious reasons, solar eclipses can't occur during a full moon (passovers always occur during full moons), Nor does a single contemporary person write about the earthquake
described in Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth shook, rocks ripped apart (rent),
and graves opened.

Matthew 2 describes Herod and all
of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of the infant Jesus. Herod then had
all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If such extraordinary infanticides
of this magnitude had occurred, why didn't anyone write about it?

Some apologists attempt to dig
themselves out of this problem by claiming that there lived no capable historians
during that period, or due to the lack of education of the people with a writing
capacity, or even sillier, the scarcity of paper gave reason why no one recorded
their "savior." But the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served,
in fact, as the center of education and record keeping for the Jewish people.
The Romans, of course, also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels mention
scribes many times, not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected
with the high priests. And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time
who had the capacity and capability to record, not only insignificant gossip,
but significant events, especially from a religious sect who drew so much
popular attention through an allegedly famous and infamous Jesus.

Take, for example, the works of
Philo Judaeus (also known as Philo of Alexander) whose birth occurred in 20 B.C.E. and died 50 C.E. He lived
as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and
lived in the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote
detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area.
Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we read a single account
of a Jesus* "the Christ." Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in
Seneca's (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the
Elder (23? - 79 C.E.).

* Note, Philo did write about a pre-Christian celestial "Jesus," but this had nothing to do with the Christian Jesus (unless Christians "stole" Philo's ideas). See Philo's On the Confusion of Tongues (62-63, 146-147)

If, indeed, such a well known Jesus
existed, as the gospels allege, does any reader here think it reasonable that,
at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of one
of these men?

Amazingly, we have not one Jewish,
Greek, or Roman writer, even those who lived in the Middle East, much less
anywhere else on the earth, who ever mention him during his supposed life
time. This appears quite extraordinary, and you will find few Christian apologists
who dare mention this embarrassing fact.

To illustrate this extraordinary
absence of Jesus Christ literature, just imagine going through nineteenth
century literature looking for an Abraham Lincoln but unable to find a single
mention of him in any writing on earth until the 20th century. Yet straight-faced
Christian apologists and historians want you to buy a factual Jesus out of
a dearth void of evidence, and rely on nothing but hearsay written well after
his purported life. Considering that most Christians believe that Jesus lived
as God on earth, the Almighty gives an embarrassing example for explaining
his existence. You'd think a Creator might at least have the ability to bark
up some good solid evidence.

HISTORICAL SCHOLARS

Many problems occur with the reliability
of the accounts from ancient historians. Most of them did not provide sources
for their claims, as they rarely included bibliographic listings, or supporting
claims. They did not have access to modern scholarly techniques, and many
times would include hearsay as evidence. No one today would take a modern
scholar seriously who used the standards of ancient historians, yet this proves
as the only kind of source that Christology comes from. Couple this
with the fact that many historians believed as Christians themselves, sometimes
members of the Church, and you have a built-in prejudice towards supporting
a "real" Jesus.

In modern scholarship, even the
best historians and Christian apologists play the historian game. They can
only use what documents they have available to them. If they only have hearsay
accounts then they have to play the cards that history deals them. Many historians
feel compelled to use interpolation or guesses from hearsay, and yet this
very dubious information sometimes ends up in encyclopedias and history books
as fact.

In other words, Biblical scholarship
gets forced into a lower standard by the very sources they examine. A renowned
Biblical scholar illustrated this clearly in an interview when asked about
Biblical interpretation. David Noel Freeman (the General editor of the Anchor
Bible Series and many other works) responded with:

"We have to accept somewhat
looser standards. In the legal profession, to convict the defendant of a
crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance
of the evidence is sufficient. When dealing with the Bible or any ancient
source, we have to loosen up a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything."

-David Noel Freedman (in Bible
Review magazine, Dec. 1993, p.34)

The implications appear obvious.
If one wishes to believe in a historical Jesus, he or she must accept this
based on loose standards. Couple this with the fact that all of the claims
come from hearsay, and we have a foundation made of sand, and a castle of
information built of cards.

CITING GEOGRAPHY, AND KNOWN
HISTORICAL FIGURES AS "EVIDENCE"

Although the New Testament mentions
various cities, geological sites, kings and people that existed or lived during
the alleged life of Jesus, these descriptions cannot serve as evidence for
the existence of Jesus anymore than works of fiction that include recognizable
locations, and make mention of actual people.

Homer's Odyssey, for example, describes
the travels of Odysseus throughout the Greek islands. The epic describes,
in detail, many locations that existed in history. But should we take Odysseus,
the Greek gods and goddesses, one-eyed giants and monsters as literal fact
simply because the story depicts geographic locations accurately? Of course
not. The authors of mythical stories, fictions, and novels almost always use familiar
landmarks as placements for their stories. The authors of the Greek tragedies
not only put their stories in plausible settings as happening in the real
world but their supernatural characters took on the desires, flaws and failures
of mortal human beings. Consider that fictions such as King Kong, Superman,
and Star Trek include recognizable cities, planets, and landmarks, with their
protagonists and antagonists miming human emotions.

Likewise, just because the Gospels
mention cities and locations in Judea, and known historical people, with Jesus
behaving like an actual human being (with the added dimension of supernatural
curses, miracles, etc.) but this says nothing about the actuality of the characters
portrayed in the stories. However, when a story uses impossible historical
locations, or geographical errors, we may question the authority of the claims.

For example, in Matt 4:8, the author
describes the devil taking Jesus into an exceedingly high mountain to show
him all the kingdoms of the world. Since there exists no spot on the spheroid
earth to view "all the kingdoms," we know that the Bible errs here.

John 12:21 says, "The same
came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee. . . ." Bethsaida
resided in Gaulonitis (Golan region), east of the Jordan river, not Galilee,
which resided west of the river.

John 3:23 says, "John also
was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. . . ." Critics agree that no such
place as Aenon exists near Salim.

No one has evidence
for a city namedNazareth at the time of the alleged Jesus. [Gauvin] Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament, nor does it appear
in the volumes of Josephus's writings (even though he provides a
list of cities in Galilee). Oddly, none of the New Testament epistle writers
ever mentions Nazareth or a Jesus of Nazareth even though most of the epistles
appeared before the gospels. In fact no one mentions Nazareth until
the Gospels, where the first one didn't come into existence until about 40 years after the alleged
death of Jesus. If a city named Nazareth existed during the 1st century,
then we need at least one contemporary piece of evidence for the name, otherwise
we cannot refer to it as established history. According to John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, "The only epigraphic evidence for Nazareth comes from a Jewish synagogue inscription, written in Hebrew. A small dark gray marble fragment from a third, or fourth century C.E. synagogue plaque was discovered at Caesarea Maritima in 1962, containing the earliest occurrence of the name Nazareth in a non-Christian source. This fragment and two others unearthed with it preserve a list of the traditional locations where Jewish priests resettled after the Roman emperor Hadrian banned all Jews from Jerusalem in 135 C.E." [Grossan, 2001] And given the past history of made up objects for Jesus, even this might turn out as a forgery.

Some historians do not agree with this of course. Some think Nazareth existed, some don't think it existed, and some remain skeptical, but the fact that historians still debate it should tell you that that we should not use this as a certainty. Moreover, some scholars think it as a moot point because they believe "Nazareth" refers to a Christian movement, not a city. For one example, Acts 24:5 refers to a sect of the Nazarenes. The Gospel writers then might have confused the term to mean the city (which by the time they wrote the gospels, a city did exist with that name). We have a lot of educated guesses by scholars, but no certainty.

Many more kinds of errors and uncertainties like this appear in the New Testament. And although one cannot
use these as evidence against a historical Jesus, we can certainly question
the reliability of the texts. If the scriptures make so many factual errors
about geology, science, and contain so many contradictions, falsehoods could
occur any in area.

If we have a coupling with historical
people and locations, then we should also have some historical reference of
a Jesus to these locations and people. But just the opposite proves the case.
The Bible depicts Herod, the Ruler of Jewish Palestine under Rome as sending
out men to search and kill the infant Jesus, yet nothing in history supports
such a story. Pontius Pilate supposedly performed as judge in the trial and
execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. The gospels
portray a multitude of believers throughout the land spreading tales of a
teacher, prophet, and healer, yet nobody in Jesus' life time or years
after, ever records such a human figure. The lack of a historical Jesus in
the known historical record speaks for itself.

COMPARING JESUS TO OTHER HISTORICAL
FIGURES

Many Christian apologists attempt
to extricate themselves from their lack of evidence by claiming that if we
cannot rely on the post chronicle exegesis of Jesus, then we cannot establish
a historical foundation for other figures such as Alexander the Great, Augustus
Caesar, Napoleon, etc. However, there sits a vast difference between historical
figures and Jesus. There occurs either artifacts, writings, or eyewitness
accounts for historical people, whereas, for Jesus we have nothing.

Alexander, for example, left a
wake of destroyed and created cities behind. We have buildings, libraries
and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his name. We have treaties, and even
a letter from Alexander to the people of Chios, engraved in stone, dated at
332 B.C.E. For Augustus Caesar, we have the Res gestae divi augusti,
the emperor's own account of his works and deeds, a letter to his son (Epistula
ad Gaium filium), Virgil's eyewitness accounts, and much more. Napoleon
left behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters. We can establish some
historicity to these people because we have evidence that occurred during
their life times. Yet even with contemporary evidence, historians have become
wary of after-the-fact stories of many of these historical people. For example,
some of the stories of Alexander's conquests, or Nero starting the fire in
Rome always gets questioned or doubted because they contain inconsistencies
or come from authors who wrote years after the alleged facts. In qualifying
the history of Alexander, Pierre Briant writes, "Although more than twenty
of his contemporaries chronicled Alexander's life and campaigns, none of these
texts survive in original form. Many letters and speeches attributed to Alexander
are ancient forgeries or reconstructions inspired by imagination or political
motives. The little solid documentation we possess from Alexander's own time
is mainly to be found in stone inscriptions from the Greek cities of Europe
and Asia." [Briant]

Inventing histories out of whole
cloth or embellished from a seed of an actual historical event appears common
throughout the chronicle of human thought. Robert Price observes, "Alexander
the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, King Arthur, and others have nearly suffered
this fate. What keeps historians from dismissing them as mere myths, like
Paul Bunyan, is that there is some residue. We know at least a bit of mundane
information about them, perhaps quite a bit, that does not form part of any
legend cycle." [Price, pp. 260-261]

Interestingly, almost all important
historical people have descriptions of what they looked like. We have the
image of Augustus Caesar cast on denarius coins, busts of Greek and Roman
aristocrats, artwork of Napoleon, etc. We have descriptions of facial qualities,
height, weight, hair length & color, age and even portraits of most important
historical figures. But for Jesus, we have nothing. Nowhere in the
Bible do we have a description of the human shape of Jesus. How can we rely
on the Gospels as the word of Jesus when no one even describes what he looked
like? How odd that none of the disciple characters record what he looked like,
yet believers attribute them to know exactly what he said. Indeed, this gives
us a clue that Jesus came to the gospel writers and indirect and through myth.
Not until hundreds of years after the alleged Jesus did pictures emerge as
to what he looked like from cult Christians, and these widely differed from
a blond clean shaven, curly haired Apollonian youth (found in the Roman catacombs)
to a long-bearded Italian as depicted to this day. This mimics the pattern
of Greek mythological figures as their believers constructed various images
of what their gods looked like according to their own cultural image.

Historical people leave us with
contemporary evidence, but for Jesus we have nothing. If we wanted
to present a fair comparison of the type of information about Jesus to another
example of equal historical value, we could do no better than to compare Jesus
with the mythical figure of Hercules.

IF JESUS, THEN WHY NOT HERCULES?

If a person accepts hearsay and
accounts from believers as historical evidence for Jesus, then shouldn't they
act consistently to other accounts based solely on hearsay and belief?

To take one example, examine the
evidence for Hercules of Greek mythology and you will find it parallels
the "historicity" of Jesus to such an amazing degree that for Christian
apologists to deny Hercules as a historical person belies and contradicts
the very same methodology used for a historical Jesus.

Note that Herculean myth resembles
Jesus in many areas. The mortal and chaste Alcmene, the mother of Hercules, gave birth to him from a union with God (Zeus). Similar to Herod who wanted
to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled
the earth as a mortal helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Similar to
Jesus who died and rose to heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and
became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient
Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about
him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him.

Likewise the "evidence"
of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people like
Hesiod and Plato who mention Hercules in their writings. Similar to the way the gospels tell
a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict
the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules.
Just as we have a brief mention of Jesus by Joesphus in his Antiquities,
Joesphus also mentions Hercules (more times than Jesus), in the very same
work (see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus,
so does he also mention Hercules many times in his Annals.
And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses
about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules
and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe
in a historical Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and
that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of course not, and the same must
apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity.

Some critics doubt that a historicized
Jesus could develop from myth because they think there never occurred any
precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what about
the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example--
the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero,
Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures
such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc. These writers put
their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus,
for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed,
"The whole approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who
originated it." [Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling
historicized mythologies: UFO adherents whose beliefs began as a dream of
alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some
of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started
as pure fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from
fiction but believed by their constituents.

People consider Hercules and other
Greek gods as myth because people no longer believe in the Greek and
Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so do their gods. Christianity and
its church authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence
on governments, institutions, and colleges. Anyone doing research on Jesus,
even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else risk future funding
and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian
friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and
it will defend, at all costs, even the most unreliable sources. The faithful
want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create intellectual barriers
that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian
professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world
that tell us we should accept a historical Jesus that if repeated often enough,
it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic. The establishment of history
should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because
a scholar has a reputation as a historian. Historical review has yet to achieve
the reliability of scientific investigation, (and in fact, many times ignores
it). If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should depend primarily
with the evidence itself and not just because he or she says so. Facts do
not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence
at all, facts depend on evidence.

THEN WHY THE MYTH OF JESUS?

Some people actually believe that
just because so much voice and ink has spread the word of a character named
Jesus throughout history, that this must mean that he actually lived. This
argument simply does not hold. The number of people who believe or write about
something or the professional degrees they hold say nothing at all about fact.
Facts derive out of evidence, not from hearsay, not from hubris scholars,
and certainly not from faithful believers. Regardless of the position or admiration
held by a scholar, believer, or priest, if he or she cannot support a
hypothesis with good evidence, then it can only remain a hypothesis.

While a likely possibility exists that
an actual Jesus lived, another likely possibility reveals that a mythology
could have derived out of earlier mythologies or possibly independent archetypal hero worship. Although we have no
evidence for a historical Jesus, we certainly have many accounts of mythologies
from the Middle East during the first century and before. Many of these stories appear
similar to the Christ saviour story.

Just before and during the first century, the Jews had prophesied
about an upcoming Messiah based on Jewish scripture. Their beliefs influenced
many of their followers. We know that powerful beliefs can create self-fulfilling
prophesies, and surely this proved just as true in ancient times. It served
as a popular dream expressed in Hebrew Scripture for the promise of an "end-time"
with a savior to lead them to the promised land. Indeed, Roman records show
executions of several would-be Messiahs, (but not a single record mentions
a Jesus). Many ancients believed that there could come a final war against
the "Sons of Darkness"-- the Romans.

This then could very well have
served as the ignition and flame for the future growth of Christianity. Biblical scholars tell us that the early Christians lived within pagan communities. Jewish scriptural
beliefs coupled with the pagan myths of the time give sufficient information
about how such a religion could have formed. Many of the Hellenistic and pagan
myths parallel so closely to the alleged Jesus that to ignore its similarities
means to ignore the mythological beliefs of history. Dozens of similar savior
stories propagated the minds of humans long before the alleged life of Jesus.
Virtually nothing about Jesus "the Christ" came to the Christians
as original or new.

For example, the religion of Zoroaster,
founded circa 628-551 B.C.E. in ancient Persia, roused mankind in the need
for hating a devil, the belief of a paradise, last judgment and resurrection
of the dead. Mithraism, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism probably influenced
early Christianity. The Magi described in the New Testament appears as Zoroastrian
priests. Note the word "paradise" came from the Persian pairidaeza.

Osiris, Hercules, Hermes,
Prometheus, Perseus, Romulus, and others compare to the Christian myth. According to
Patrick Campbell of The Mythical Jesus, all served as pre-Christian
sun gods, yet all allegedly had gods for fathers, virgins for mothers; had
their births announced by stars; got born on the solstice around December
25th; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their infancy; met violent deaths;
rose from the dead; and nearly all got worshiped by "wise men" and
had allegedly fasted for forty days. [McKinsey, Chapter 5]

Even Justin Martyr recognized the
analogies between Christianity and Paganism. To the Pagans, he wrote: "When
we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual
union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and
rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what
you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)."
[First Apology, ch. xxi]

Virtually all of the mythical accounts
of a savior Jesus have parallels to past pagan mythologies which existed long
before Christianity and from the Jewish scriptures that we now call the Old
Testament. The accounts of these myths say nothing about historical reality,
but they do say a lot about believers, how they believed, and how their beliefs
spread.

In the book The
Jesus Puzzle, the biblical scholar, Earl Doherty, presents not only
a challenge to the existence of an historical Jesus but reveals that early
pre-Gospel Christian documents show that the concept of Jesus sprang from
non-historical spiritual beliefs of a Christ derived from Jewish scripture
and Hellenized myths of savior gods. Nowhere do any of the New Testament epistle
writers describe a human Jesus, including Paul. None of the epistles mention
a Jesus from Nazareth, an earthly teacher, or as a human miracle worker. Nowhere
do we find these writers quoting Jesus. Nowhere do we find them describing
any details of Jesus' life on earth or his followers. Nowhere do we find the
epistle writers even using the word "disciple" (they of course use
the term "apostle" but the word simply means messenger, as Paul
saw himself). Except for a few well known interpolations, Jesus always gets
presented as a spiritual being that existed before all time with God, and
that knowledge of Christ came directly from God or as a revelation from the
word of scripture. Doherty writes, "Christian documents outside the Gospels,
even at the end of the first century and beyond, show no evidence that any
tradition about an earthly life and ministry of Jesus were in circulation."

Furthermore, the epistle to the Hebrews (8:4), makes it explicitly clear that the epistle writer did not believe in a historical Jesus: "If He [Jesus] had been on earth, He would not be a priest."

Did the Christians copy (or steal) the pagan ideas directly into their own faith? Not necessarily. They may have gotten many of their beliefs through syncretism or through independent hero archetype worship, innate to human story telling. If gotten through syncretism, Jews and pagans could very well have influenced the first Christians, especially the ideas of salvation and beliefs about good and evil. Later, at the time of the gospels, other myths may entered Christian beliefs such a the virgin birth and miracles. In the 4th century, we know that Christians derived the birthday of Jesus from the pagans. If gotten through independent means, it still says nothing about Christian originality because we know that pagans had beliefs about incarnated gods, long before Christianity existed. The hero archetypes still exist in our story telling today. As one personal example, as a boy I used to read and collect Superman comics. It never occurred to me at the time to see Superman as a Christ-figure. Yet, if you analyze Superman and Jesus stories, they have uncanny similarities. In fact the movie Superman Returns explicitly tells the Superman story through a savior's point of view without once mentioning Jesus, yet Christians would innately know the connection. Other movies like Star Wars, Phenomenon, K-PAX, The Matrix, etc. also covertly tell savior stories. So whether the first Christians borrowed or independently came up with a savior story makes no difference whatsoever. The point here only aims to illustrate that Christians did not originate the savior story.

The early historical documents
can prove nothing about an actual Jesus but they do show an evolution
of belief derived from varied and diverse concepts of Christianity, starting
from a purely spiritual form of Christ to a human figure who embodied that
spirit, as portrayed in the Gospels. The New Testament stories appears as
an eclectic hodgepodge of Jewish, Hellenized and pagan stories compiled by
pietistic believers to appeal to an audience for their particular religious
times.

A NOTE ABOUT DATING:

The A.D. (Anno Domini, or
"year of our Lord") dating method derived from a monk named Dionysius
Exiguus (Dennis the Little), in the sixth-century who used it in his Easter
tables. Oddly, some people seem to think this has relevance to a historical
Jesus. But of course it has nothing at all to do with it. In the time before
and during the 6th century, people used various other dating methods. The
Romans used A.U.C. (anno urbis conditae, "year of the founded
city," that being Rome). The Jews had their own dating system. Not until
the tenth century did most churches accept the new dating system. The A.D.
system simply reset the time of January 1, 754 A.U.C. to January 1, of year
one A.D., which Dionysius obliquely derived from the belief of the date of
"incarnation" of Jesus. The date, if one uses the Bible as history,
can't possibly hold true. *

Instead of B.C. and A.D., I have
used the convention of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era)
as often used in scholarly literature. They correspond to the same dates as
B.C. and A.D., but without alluding to the birth or death of an alleged Christ.

* Dionysius believed
that the conception (incarnation) of Jesus occurred on March 25. This meant
that the conception must have occurred nine months later on December 25, probably
not coincidentally, the very same date that the Emperor Aurelian, in 274 C.E.,
declared December 25 a holiday in celebration of the birth of Mithras, the
sun god. By 336 C.E., Christians replaced Mithras with Jesus' birth on the
same date. Dionysius then declared the new year several days later on January
1, probably to coincide with the traditional Roman year starting on January
1st. Dionysius probably never read the gospel account of the birth of Jesus
because the Matthew gospel says his birth occurred while Herod served as King.
That meant that if he did exist, his birth would have to occur in 4 B.C.E.
or earlier. He made another 'mistake' by assigning the first year as 1 instead
of 0 (everyone's birthday starts at year 0, not 1). The concept of zero (invented
from Arabia and India) didn't come into Europe until about two hundred years
later.

QUOTES FROM A FEW SCHOLARS:

Although the majority of scholars today believe that a Jesus lived on earth,
the reasons for this appear suspicious once you consider the history and evolution of Jesus scholarship. Hundreds of years ago all Biblical scholars believed in God. Considering their Christian beliefs, they would, of course, believe in a historical Jesus. In the last two centuries, the school has loosened up a bit, and today they even allow atheists into their study rooms. But even today you had better allude to a historical Jesus even if you question the reliability of the sources, otherwise, you may not have a job. If, indeed, Bible scholars did allow skeptics of a historical Jesus into their studies, and they presented a convincing case, that could threaten the very branch of Jesus scholarship that studied a historical Jesus. It could very well disappear like that of euhermerism.

Although
some secular freethinkers and atheists accept a historical Jesus (minus the
miracles), they, like most Christians, simply accept the traditional view
without question. As time goes on, more and more scholars have begun to open
the way to a more honest look at the evidence, or should I say, the lack of
evidence. So for those who wish to rely on scholarly opinion, I will give
a few quotes from Biblical researchers and scholars, past and present:

When the Church mythologists established
their system, they collected all the writings they could find and managed
them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether
such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testaments
are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them, or whether
they added, altered, abridged or dressed them up.

-Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

The world has been for a long
time engaged in writing lives of Jesus... The library of such books has
grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts
us: all of these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does
not exist a single scrap of contemporary information -- not one! By accepted
tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of
the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians flourished;
poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the
name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident in his life.

-Moncure D. Conway [1832 - 1907]
(Modern Thought)

It is only in comparatively modern
times that the possibility was considered that Jesus does not belong to history
at all.

-J.M. Robertson (Pagan Christs)

Many people-- then and now-- have
assumed that these letters [of Paul] are genuine, and five of them were in
fact incorporated into the New Testament as "letters of Paul." Even
today, scholars dispute which are authentic and which are not. Most scholars,
however, agree that Paul actually wrote only eight of the thirteen "Pauline"
letters now included in the New Testament. collection: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians,
Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Virtually all scholars
agree that Paul himself did not write 1 or 2 Timothy or Titus-- letters written
in a style different from Paul's and reflecting situations and viewpoints
in a style different from those in Paul's own letters. About the authorship
of Ephesias, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, debate continues; but the majority
of scholars include these, too, among the "deutero-Pauline"-- literally,
secondarily Pauline-- letters."

-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion
at Princeton University, (Adam, Eve, and the Serpent)

We know virtually nothing about
the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Some hoped to penetrate the various
accounts and to discover the "historical Jesus". . . and that sorting
out "authentic" material in the gospels was virtually impossible
in the absence of independent evidence."

-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion
at Princeton University

The gospels are so anonymous that
their titles, all second-century guesses, are all four wrong.

-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote
the Gospels?)

Far from being an intimate of an
intimate of Jesus, Mark wrote at the forth remove from Jesus.

-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote
the Gospels?)

Mark himself clearly did not know
any eyewitnesses of Jesus.

-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote
the Gospels?)

All four gospels are anonymous
texts. The familiar attributions of the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John come from the mid-second century and later and we have no good historical
reason to accept these attributions.

-Steve Mason, professor of classics,
history and religious studies at York University in Toronto (Bible Review,
Feb. 2000, p. 36)

The question must also be raised
as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel.

-Bishop John Shelby Spong

But even if it could be proved
that John's Gospel had been the first of the four to be written down, there
would still be considerable confusion as to who "John" was. For
the various styles of the New Testament texts ascribed to John- The Gospel,
the letters, and the Book of Revelations-- are each so different in their
style that it is extremely unlikely that they had been written by one person.

-John Romer, archeologist &
Bible scholar (Testament)

It was not until the third century
that Jesus' cross of execution became a common symbol of the Christian faith.

-John Romer, archeologist &
Bible scholar (Testament)

What one believes and what one
can demonstrate historically are usually two different things.

When it comes to the historical
question about the Gospels, I adopt a mediating position-- that is, these
are religious records, close to the sources, but they are not in accordance
with modern historiographic requirements or professional standards.

-David Noel Freedman, Bible scholar
and general editor of the Anchor Bible series (Bible Review, December 1993,
Vol. IX, Number 6, p.34)

Paul did not write the letters
to Timothy to Titus or several others published under his name; and it is
unlikely that the apostles Matthew, James, Jude, Peter and John had anything
to do with the canonical books ascribed to them.

A generation after Jesus' death,
when the Gospels were written, the Romans had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple
(in 70 C.E.); the most influential centers of Christianity were cities of
the Mediterranean world such as Alexandria, Antioch, Corinth, Damascus, Ephesus
and Rome. Although large number of Jews were also followers of Jesus, non-Jews
came to predominate in the early Church. They controlled how the Gospels were
written after 70 C.E.

James Dunn says that the Sermon
on the Mount, mentioned only by Matthew, "is in fact not historical."

How historical can the Gospels
be? Are Murphy-O-Conner's speculations concerning Jesus' baptism by John simply
wrong-headed? How can we really know if the baptism, or any other event written
about in the Gospels, is historical?

David Friedrich Strauss (The Life
of Jesus, 1836), had argued that the Gospels could not be read as straightforward
accounts of what Jesus actually did and said; rather, the evangelists and
later redactors and commentators, influenced by their religious beliefs, had
made use of myths and legends that rendered the gospel narratives, and traditional
accounts of Jesus' life, unreliable as sources of historical information.

-Bible Review, October 1996, Vol.
XII, Number 5, p. 39

The Gospel authors were Jews writing
within the midrashic tradition and intended their stories to be read
as interpretive narratives, not historical accounts.

-Bishop Shelby Spong, Liberating
the Gospels

Other scholars have concluded that
the Bible is the product of a purely human endeavor, that the identity of
the authors is forever lost and that their work has been largely obliterated
by centuries of translation and editing.

Yet today, there are few Biblical
scholars-- from liberal skeptics to conservative evangelicals- who believe
that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the Gospels. Nowhere do
the writers of the texts identify themselves by name or claim unambiguously
to have known or traveled with Jesus.

The tradition attributing the fourth
Gospel to the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, is first noted by Irenaeus
in A.D. 180. It is a tradition based largely on what some view as the writer's
reference to himself as "the beloved disciple" and "the disciple
whom Jesus loved." Current objection to John's authorship are based largely
on modern textural analyses that strongly suggest the fourth Gospel was the
work of several hands, probably followers of an elderly teacher in Asia Minor
named John who claimed as a young man to have been a disciple of Jesus.

Some scholars say so many revisions
occurred in the 100 years following Jesus' death that no one can be absolutely
sure of the accuracy or authenticity of the Gospels, especially of the words
the authors attributed to Jesus himself.

The Epistle of James is a practical
book, light on theology and full of advice on ethical behavior. Even so, its
place in the Bible has been challenged repeatedly over the years. It is generally
believed to have been written near the end of the first century to Jewish
Christians. . . but scholars are unable conclusively to identify the writer.

Five men named James appear in
the New Testament: the brother of Jesus, the son of Zebedee, the son of Alphaeus,
"James the younger" and the father of the Apostle Jude.

Little is known of the last three,
and since the son of Zebedee was martyred in A.D. 44, tradition has leaned
toward the brother of Jesus. However, the writer never claims to be Jesus'
brother. And scholars find the language too erudite for a simple Palestinian.
This letter is also disputed on theological grounds. Martin Luther called
it "an epistle of straw" that did not belong in the Bible because
it seemed to contradict Paul's teachings that salvation comes by faith as
a "gift of God"-- not by good works.

Christian tradition has held that
the Apostle Peter wrote the first [letter], probably in Rome shortly before
his martyrdom about A.D. 65. However, some modern scholars cite the epistle's
cultivated language and its references to persecutions that did not occur
until the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) as evidence that it was actually
written by Peter's disciples sometime later.

Second Peter has suffered even
harsher scrutiny. Many scholars consider it the latest of all New Testament
books, written around A.D. 125. The letter was never mentioned in second-century
writings and was excluded from some church canons into the fifth century.
"This letter cannot have been written by Peter," wrote Werner Kummel,
a Heidelberg University scholar, in his highly regarded Introduction to
the New Testament.

According to the declaration of
the Second Vatican Council, a faithful account of the actions and words of
Jesus is to be found in the Gospels; but it is impossible to reconcile this
with the existence in the text of contradictions, improbabilities, things
which are materially impossible or statements which run contrary to firmly
established reality.

-Maurice Bucaille (The Bible, the
Quran, and Science)

The bottom line is we really don't
know for sure who wrote the Gospels.

-Jerome Neyrey, of the Weston School
of Theology, Cambridge, Mass. in "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News
& World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Most scholars have come to acknowledge,
was done not by the Apostles but by their anonymous followers (or their followers'
followers). Each presented a somewhat different picture of Jesus' life. The
earliest appeared to have been written some 40 years after his Crucifixion.

-David Van Biema, "The Gospel
Truth?" (Time, April 8, 1996)

So unreliable were the Gospel accounts
that "we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality
of Jesus."

-Rudolf Bultmann, University of
Marburg, the foremost Protestant scholar in the field in 1926

The Synoptic Gospels employ techniques
that we today associate with fiction.

Josephus says that he himself witnessed
a certain Eleazar casting out demons by a method of exorcism that had been
given to Solomon by God himself-- while Vespasian watched! In the same work,
Josephus tells the story of a rainmaker, Onias (14.2.1).

For Mark's gospel to work, for
instance, you must believe that Isaiah 40:3 (quoted, in a slightly distorted
form, in Mark 1:2-3) correctly predicted that a stranger named John would
come out of the desert to prepare the way for Jesus. It will then come as
something of a surprise to learn in the first chapter of Luke that John is
a near relative, well known to Jesus' family.

Jesus is a mythical figure in the
tradition of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of ancient literature
would lead one to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived
and walked as a real live human being must do so despite the evidence, not
because of it.

We are led to conclude that, in
Paul's past, there was no historical Jesus. Rather, the activities of the
Son about which God's gospel in scripture told, as interpreted by Paul, had
taken place in the spiritual realm and were accessible only through revelation.

-Earl Doherty, "The Jesus
Puzzle," p.83

Before the Gospels were adopted
as history, no record exists that he was ever in the city of Jerusalem at
all-- or anywhere else on earth.

-Earl Doherty, "The Jesus
Puzzle," p.141

Even if there was a historical
Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there
ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more. All attempts to recover
him turn out to be just modern remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical
Jesus" is a Christ of faith, of somebody's faith. So the "historical
Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less a fiction.

-Robert M. Price, "Jesus:
Fact or Fiction, A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price and Rev. John Rankin,"
Opening
Statement

It is important to recognize the
obvious: The gospel story of Jesus is itself apparently mythic from first
to last."

Belief cannot produce historical
fact, and claims that come from nothing but hearsay do not amount to an honest
attempt to get at the facts. Even with eyewitness accounts we must tread carefully.
Simply because someone makes a claim, does not mean it represents reality.
For example, consider some of the bogus claims that supposedly come from many
eyewitness accounts of alien extraterrestrials and their space craft. They
not only assert eyewitnesses but present blurry photos to boot! If we can
question these accounts, then why should we not question claims that come
from hearsay even more? Moreover, consider that the hearsay comes from ancient
and unknown people that no longer live.

Unfortunately, belief and faith
substitute as knowledge in many people's minds and nothing, even direct evidence
thrust on the feet of their claims, could possibly change their minds. We
have many stories, myths and beliefs of a Jesus but if we wish to establish
the facts of history, we cannot even begin to put together a knowledgeable
account without at least an eyewitness account or a contemporary artifact that points to a biological Jesus.

Of course a historical Jesus might
have existed, perhaps based loosely on a living human even though his actual
history got lost, but this amounts to nothing but speculation. However we
do have an abundance of evidence supporting the mythical evolution
of Jesus. Virtually every major detail in the gospel stories occurred in Hebrew scripture and pagan beliefs, long before the advent of Christianity. We simply do not have
a shred of evidence to determine the historicity of a Jesus "the Christ."
We only have evidence for the belief of Jesus.

So if you hear anyone who claims
to have evidence for a witness of a historical Jesus, simply ask for the author's
birth date. Anyone whose birth occurred after an event cannot serve
as an eyewitness, nor can their words alone serve as evidence for that event.

Sources (click on a blue highlighted title if you'd like to obtain
it or read it):